Curtain By Helen Spalding Theme: The poem deals with the theme- separation through the example of lovers. England was facing tumultuous times owing to Second World War and the poem Curtain talks of universal separation in the backdrop of war. Curtain symbolizes End of performance Separation of audience from actors End of a relationship Final end i.e. death Literary Devices usedSensory Image: Laced fingers Stiffen A sense of touch is evoked in the 1st stanza Frosted warm Simile: 1. And stiffen like frosted flowers. 2.Already division piles like bullets.(separation compared to bullets) 3.like the dreamer Transferred Epithet: Desolate Sea Irony: 1.Quiet Disaster 2.Murder of one kiss are born two ghosts Stanza 1: The poem opens with a single dramatic tentative`Goodbye’. This small formal word spells separation and parting for the lovers. Separation is a state they had never imagined in their relationship and therefore goodbye seems all the more incredulous.Love finds its summation in union,but here the lovers decide to separate which is incredulous and unbelievable. Slowly their intertwined fingers loosen.(warmth of their relation is symbolized by their handclasp which breaksdown )Just like winter flowers are nowhere near enticing as spring flowers –a sort of coldness,frigidity enters their relation.The warmth their touch evoked now gives way to coldness due to their parting. They are yet going through moments of farewell and already their parting seems to pierce their hearts as deeply, sharply as bullets may. Already the one dark air of momentous togetherness is suffused with strangeness.
The air that held fond memories of togetherness that was charged with emotions of love suddenly seems strange as lovers go through moments of farewell/ The air of affection and friendliness that always surrounded them has now become an air of silence. awkwardness and strangeness. 2nd Stanza There is no intimacy now physical or emotional, the wave/ bond of intimacy has broken. The ties which symbolized warmth have been cruelly severed by the hands of war.The wave that had momentarily charged them with emotions has ebbed and their love is a matter of the past now. Even now there are words that they want to communicate to each other but they remain unsaid as distance overpowers the magical moments they once might have shared engulfing, their identity of oneness.Separation is too great a gulf for things to be heard.Distance seems to be moving faster than time. 3rd Stanza The lover recedes into her private realm to escape the pain and agony of separation. The dreamer here is the woman who still holds lingering feelings for her lover. She doesn’t want to face the ugly reality i.e. separation. She behaves like a dreamer startled from her sleep but the vivid image of the dream is lost in the process of waking. It is as if the dream has no substance. She consoles her heart to live apart and forget the past. Senses like taste and sight feel numb. Even feelings have turned cold as denoted by the words ‘clinic heart or dead heart so there is no question of heartbreak. 4th Stanza The poem ends with a rhetoric, questioning the intensity of the trauma that the lovers experience.It questions whether this Quiet Disaster is an outcome of just a single word`Goodbye’ The poet labels this disaster as Quiet- ironically pointing that though the disaster is traumatic for the lovers, it is their private and personal disaster. Therefore they cannot lament loudly, moreover, the poet stresses on the irony that a disaster can never be quiet. The final question that arises is whether this disaster should be lamented/ mourned because with final kiss of parting which is compared to a ‘white murder’ of love relationship they have become two different entities living in a distant physical and mental world of the future.It is termed as small murder since it is insignificant for the world which is ravaged by war.(it is white murder since it is bloodless murder)The murder of their love creates two ghosts who are oblivious to life, they are benumb, bereft of all emotions hence they are described as ghosts.The poet
uses the word two four times to emphasise the fact that two people are involved in the disaster and they are as lifeless as ghosts,as unsure ,untrusting as Hamlet, introspecting the situation all the time. The loneliness and dilemma of `to be or not to be’ in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is reflected in the lovers too.The lovers go through moments of `to live or not to live’-separate and lonely away from each other.They too like Hamlet soliloquies in two separate,lonely worlds.The death of their relationship forces and pushes them into 2 separate worlds where they live alone in grief.
